Obsessed in Japan Part 2: The Tokyo Simulation
I'm not a simulation theorist. I don't think we're living in some artificial computer generated reality. But I do believe that we live in a different, human engineered, simulated reality. As a species, everything we've invented for the sake of safety and convenience has distanced us from the conditions our species evolved under. We’ve gone from huts to air-conditioned homes. Hunting to farming to Whole Foods. Walking to cars. Campfire stories to Netflix. So on and so forth. From this perspective, virtually all towns, villages and cities are, to varying extents, simulated realities.
I've experienced many of Earth's mega simulations. Miami. New York City. Paris. London. Hong Kong. Mexico City. Sao Paolo. Berlin. Madrid. Bangkok. However it took a mere week to conclude that Tokyo, in ways both magnificent and unnerving, is the most simulationy of all simulations. In this simulation-to-dwarf-all-simulations I see the promise of what might be, and the warning of what might be lost.
My Tokyo simulation begins the moment I step foot out of the metro station. In some ways I've been here before. I know big dense modernity. But something about Tokyo feels different. It’s tighter here. The streets smaller and buildings more compact.
Tokyo is three dimensional. Below ground is an infinite noodle bowl of subway lines and stores. Everywhere is something on the street level. Retail signs big and small. Advertisements. Shops. Vending machines. Mega screens. Restaurants. Metro stops. Municipal markings. Symbols to a language I’ll never know. Anime characters. Even Godzilla makes a cameo.
Looking up, every floor of every building is packed with micro businesses, mega mall department stores and shoebox apartments. Lining the cracks of tight alleyways are tiny bars and izakayas which function like bite sized living rooms for salaried beer clinkers.
But this still doesn’t explain the surreality I feel walking around Tokyo. What I sense is best approximated as an invisible yet ever present force guiding the flow of all things.
Take movement. Everyone walks, boards and exits trains, crosses streets, ascends escalators in coordinated and predictable patterns. Breaking this flow, for example crossing the street without permission, is non existent.
There’s no better demonstration than Shibuya Crossing. On the street level of Tokyo's (and perhaps, the world’s) busiest metro station is mass synchronized swimming in pedestrian form. Thousands stand patiently for the walk sign to flash. In the mean time streams of engines zip by in all directions. Then, at the flick of a switch, they stop. Then a massive and coordinated swarm of humans walk orderly in all directions. Many stay glued to their phones confident they wont bump into one another.
Unlike the other mega simulations I’ve experienced, Tokyo is more order than chaos. Everything is as it’s supposed to be. Trains always on time. People in their right place. No space wasted. I feel something I never would have imagined feeling in a place so stimulating - calm. The hustle and bustle is more hum than scream. Noises are more incidental consequences of footsteps, trains, and engines. Car horns, signs of things going wrong, are rare.
People keep quiet and to themselves. Nobody bothers us. I don’t have to shoo off swarms of scammy Mr. Hello-My-Friend. I feel nothing approximating fear as petty crime is virtually non existent. We walk in peace.
Cleanliness might be Tokyo's greatest miracle. Despite the dense population, trash is rare. Oddly, trash cans are even harder to find. Recycling is meticulously marked. Here, my trash is my problem. I’m told rats exist, but I see no evidence.
How does it work? Where does it all go? I imagine a plain looking government worker whose family has obsessed over effective trash management for generations. Much of it must be the Japanese’s deep rooted cultural programming for cleanliness. Each morning streets stream with soapy water as shopkeepers prepare their stores for the day. Shoes are never worn inside homes.
I find no better expression of Japan's collective obsession with cleanliness and technology than the Japanese Toilet. What the PlayStation 5 is to the original Game Boy, the Japanese Toilet is to it's western counterparts. The Japanese Toilet is far more than a tool for a natural function. It is an experience. The lid opens automatically. The seat is warm. I can manipulate the bidet in directions, patterns, and temperatures I never would have thought of. When all is quiet I hear the Japanese Toilet offering uplifting affirmations.
You are so brave.
You are so beautiful.
You are so loved.
You too toilet, you too.
The Japanese Toilet is as ubiquitous as it is magnificent. These shrines of techno-cultural excellence are everywhere. Apartments. Restaurants. Hotels. Cheap bars. Even public parks. I secretly yearn for foods of less-than-ideal sanitation that would allow me to spend more time on them. It is because of the Japanese Toilet that I understand why the Japanese have historically referred to us Westerners as barbarians.
Consider this barbarian cleansed.
Shopping in Tokyo is a distinct experience. Even with limited storage space, and little taste for mindlessly hedonic consumerism, I find myself enthralled by the depth, variety, and presentation of options. Nina and I wander around stores for electronics, books, anime, toys, groceries, vintage clothes, knife shops, and vinyl records. Cafes give us the option to snuggle with anything from cats and dogs to mini pigs and otters.
Akibahara is a comic book festival in permanent neighborhood form. In this hyper-compact neighborhood we find manga, anime, toys, retro arcades, video games, capsule toy machines, premium figurines, trading cards, cos-play, and electronics. Each floor of each building is swarmed by highly ordered and undersexed looking locals.
Even department stores, something that used to give my childhood self acute existential dread, are oddly compelling. Skipping the soulless mega luxury brands, I find myself sniffing Persian perfumes, tinkering with at masterfully designed adventure gear, trying on kimonos and fantasy-furnishing my never-to-exist Tokyo apartment. I could spend hours in that one particular book store.
But nothing prepared me the department store's most glorious feature - the basement floor. The bottom floors of all Japanese department stores are reserved for food halls. The Japanese Department Store Basement, or depachika, is the product of an illicit affair between Macy's and your local farmer's market.
Everything is presented with the formal precision and elevated sophistication. Balenciaga Bento Boxes. Gucci Sushi. Hermes macaroons. Dior dashi. Michael Kors Matcha. Burberry Boba. Coach Cakes. Not exactly, but you get the idea. If 2 Chainz gets to be buried inside a Gucci store, then I want to be buried inside a Japanese department store basement.
Crowning the peak of Tokyo’s infinitely curious retail culture is a an experience that nearly broke me. In a land known for infinite consumer curiosities is a store more infinite, more curious, and more absurd than anything I’ve ever experienced.
It’s name is Don Quijote.
Don Quijote’s mascot is not a windmill slaying knight, but an imposing blue penguin perched high atop the stores peak greeting you with passive deference. Inside is one part Walmart, one part Party City, designed by the clown that gave your childhood self nightmares, and magnified by the perfectly wrong dose of acid.
Don Quijote’s offerings span the spectrum of the practical and the absurd. Rice cookers. Inflatable dinosaur costumes. Electric nose shapers. Cleaning supplies. Eyebrow stamps. Home electronics. Edible grasshoppers. Wasabi flavored Kit Kats. Manga. Pet costumes. Pet strollers. Breast enhancement creams. Vibrating slimmings belts. Disposable film cameras. Anime figurines. Giant stuffed Pikachus. Screens blast music from a live action Hello Kitty concert.
It’s at this point that I begin to fray. Each of my senses start overloading simultaneously. There’s too much to look at. Too many sounds in all directions. Too much absurdity to process. A new phrase comes to mind - simulation maxxing. Ten minutes of Don Quijote simulation maxxing is all I can handle before my psychic wiring begins to short circuit.
If Tokyo were a video game, the Don Quijote penguin would be it’s Final Boss.
Night kicks the Tokyo simulation into overdrive. Streets become a galaxy of colorful lights, screens, signs, lanterns and back-lit office windows. Dull clothed salarymen become hyper stylized socialites crowding bars and restaurants.
It’s in this moment I realize the city most comparable to Tokyo isn’t New York City, but Sim City. Here I’m a pawn inside an infinite fantasy arcade of lights sounds and smells. Atop a tower night time Tokyo has me feeling like a fish in a glowing ocean. Tokyo is everything I want it to be.
So goes day after day. Night after night. We lilly-pad across cozy cafes, steaming ramen shops, tight streets, smoky izakayas, crowded subways, konbinient konbini stores, new neighborhoods, Japanese toilets, sushi joints, department store basements and crafty cocktail bars. Every step illuminates a new pixel of this infinite mosaic. I can do this for lifetimes.
The dominant feelings in my emotional pie chart include glee, giddiness, awe, wonder, excitement, and joy. But the more time I spend in Tokyo the more I feel the sliver of another emotion. There’s something off. Something unnerving.
Disconnection is the word that keeps coming to mind.
Despite being surrounded by people at all times it feels as if we don’t exist. Everyone is locked into the micro-simulations contained within their phones. Few connect with each other, let alone us. No eye contact. No handshakes. Hugs may have gone extinct here. No acknowledgement. We might as well be fleshy entities occupying physical space.
Nobody is rude of course. The Japanese are as polite and well mannered as you would expect, but warmth is elusive. In ramen shops people slurp world class noodles while watching shows on their phone. The ubiquitous host and hostess bars, where lonely men and women pay professionals to keep them company, signals an acute shortage of basic human connection.
I ask locals what it’s like making friends and building community here. Nobody gives me a compelling answer. Most seem to be lone-wolfing it. Few I talk to seem interested in dating. As much as I love solo traveling, this is not a place I would want to be alone. Thankfully I have Nina.
Outside Tokyo’s postcard areas, day time feels dreary. Dull grey toothpick buildings blur in the foreground of a dull grey sky. Dull clothed salarymen rush to and fro like bees to a hive.
I find myself arriving at conclusions I know to be false. Words like robotic, mechanical, soulless and ant-like come to mind. I know this isn’t accurate. I know there’s thousands of years of history and cultural heritage hiding beneath the surface. I know the rich worlds contained in manga, anime and games like Final Fantasy. I know the absurdity of Japanese game shows and tentacle porn. There just seems to be a gap between what I see and what I know.
But more unnerving, I sense a disconnection from nature. What nature there is comes in the form of beautiful, but mostly ornamental parks. Bright blue plastic tarps separate picnickers from grass. People, even when alone, wear masks as if it were the middle of 2020. The sun is the greatest enemy. Even in the depths of summer many cover every exposed inch of their bodies in fear of exposure.
Privacy seems to be the ultimate casualty where space is the ultimate commodity. Domesticities I take for granted like a living room, personal car and spacious kitchen seem to be luxuries experienced by few. Maybe hyper personalized microsimulations are the final refuge for privacy.
If the darker elements of the simulation were rings in Dante’s simulated inferno, the final ring would be found inside a pachinko parlor. Inside I discover The Matrix manifest. Rows and rows of machines mounted by disconnected beings drip dropping their coins and souls into hyper-stimulating extraction devices. Everywhere, anime characters from the cute to the busty and ripped hint their encouragement. Replacing the screams of the dammed is an infinite rolling thunderstorm of slots, machine engines, computer sounds.
Roar goes the beast. On goes the simulation.
The longer I’m here, the more Japan’s birth-rate crisis makes sense. In a place with so much to do, it seems people have forgotten about the one thing we’re supposed to do as a species. To what extent is this the consequence of dense hypermodernity? To what extent is it the Japanese character? Open questions.
Tokyo is a dream manifest. A life long fantasy fulfilled. I got to explore a world radically different from my own, imagine myself living an alternate reality marvel at the promises of what might be, and remember what I appreciate about my life back home. Tokyo isn’t a simulation I would live in, but it is a game I can play again, again and again.